


Dust Motes

by jseca



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Tony's Inner Monologue, like major spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 05:23:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14465943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jseca/pseuds/jseca
Summary: "There's a growing vacuum inside of his head, one that’s going to implode at the slightest drop of a pin, he can feel it."Tony... processes.MAJOR Infinity War spoilers.





	Dust Motes

**Author's Note:**

> Once more just in case - spoilers within. I also needed to process.

There are so, so many goddamned issues that come with being a genius, too many to count really, what with the arrogance and the superiority complex and the enemies and how everyone around you can seem like a fucking idiot, like that Quill guy, god, what was his deal, couldn’t he have just _chilled_ for a **_second_** , they had it, they **_had it_** , he needs to pin this on someone and there’s nobody better,  just, anyway – the point is that one of the biggest issues with the whole ‘genius’ thing is how a mind like that just _never switches off._ A mind like that, and you’re never alone.  It sounds nice, Tony supposes,  from the outside, maybe.

Even now, as he clasps his hands to his face, unconsciously fighting against the off-kilter gravitational pull of this dead, dead planet, squeezing his eyes shut against the red of the horizon, the red of the rusted buildings, the red of what remains of his nanotech suit – which normally he’d be pretty goddamn pissed about, but right now is about as insignificant as he feels sitting on this planet - even then, there’s nothing but noise.  It’s silence normally, right?  Silence to give yourself a second to breath and process, to submerge yourself in a blissful nothing for a short moment.

But no.

His eyes may be shut but he can still see the ashes surrounding him, floating in the air like so many specks of dust, still can’t quite understand what’s happening, but he’s trying to make sense of it anyway, and it’s repeating like a manta in his head: _we lost, we lost, we lost, we lost_.  There’s a panic attack coming on, he can feel it, a universe away from home, with some weird blue – entity, where did they even come from, shouting and stabbing at inanimate objects in the background, muffled against the noise he’s creating inside his own head but enough to add to the growing vacuum inside of his head, one that’s going to implode at the slightest drop of a pin, he can feel it.

He needs to know if everyone else is okay – there are flashes, briefly, of the vision he had had not so long ago, of all his friends lying stone cold dead, and he doesn’t know if that’s the reality they’re suddenly living in or not, he has no way of contacting them, or _Pepper_ , god, Pepper, the last thing he heard from her was her pleas for him to come back, and now he probably won’t ever see her again, because there’s no way off this goddamned planet as far as he can tell – he’s stuck here, where he just watched five fucking people dissolve in front of his eyes, can’t stop replaying it, and they’re an unthinkably tiny fraction of the half of the fucking universe Thanos had it in for.  And for what?  Some self-righteous, egotistical worldview that he somehow justified to himself as mercy?! 

Mercy is not letting Peter Parker dissolve into ashes in his arms.

A noise escapes the hands over his mouth.  He buries his head deeper, clasps tighter, the tears welling up that he’s trying futilely to fight against catching on his sleeve. 

He could have prevented this.  He could have.  All the way back to when he first watched those fucking Youtube videos of some kid swinging around New York like he owned it; if he had just _stopped_ , let the kid live his life, not literally go to his apartment and lie to his aunt and drag him into something beyond his comprehension, meant for people who had lived a little more, who had been _trained_ and _mentally prepared_ and _not 16 –_

If he hadn’t felt the warm glow of the chance to have a protégé, to have someone that would look up to him, to give someone the father figure they had lacked –

He should have left well enough alone.  The people he loves are the people who get hurt the most, it’s always been that way, and as soon as he had started associating Peter with damning words like ‘father’ and ‘protégé’ and, god, he hardly wants to admit it to himself, especially not now, in this moment, but ‘son’, even, he should have told him to get the fuck away. 

But he didn’t.  Not that it would have worked anyway; even when he tried to take back the opportunity he had bestowed unto Peter, the kid had run off and done things on his own anyway, because he had given him a taste of heroism and it had fuelled him into becoming something _more._

He achieved what he had wanted, is the thing; the kid adores him.  Looks up to him, wants to be like him, puts his faith and his trust in him and –

And.

Something breaks.

He can feel the phantom echo of Pete’s arms slamming down around him, grasping onto him like he was his lifeline, because, fuck, he was, and there was _nothing he could do_ but watch in utter shock, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because there’s no way that it was happening, it’s just, hell, it could have just been Thanos messing around with the stones, showing him a nightmare turned real to really fuck with his head, right?  But the ashes on his hands and on his face and swirling in the light say otherwise, and it’s been, what, a minute?  And it’s still happening, it’s not stopping.

He slams a fist into the ground, screams into his arms, feels his breathing slip out of control.  Rational thought is a thing of the past. 

There’s a glimmer, a tiny glimmer somewhere right at the back of his mind that’s quickly clouded over, but it’s there, and it’s Strange, his voice echoing quietly as he tells Tony that _it was the only way_ , and yeah, sure, okay, maybe it was, he looked into the future or whatever the fuck, but there’s no reality that could possibly be the right one if it’s one where Pete – where he failed so _fucking hard -_

There’s just no way.

In what reality is a world where _he’s_ left alive the right option? 

Around him, the ashes catch the sunlight like swirling motes of dust.

 


End file.
